(For the US at least) I honestly expect a period of instability and a general downturn in quality of life for ideally a decade or more and in a realistic sense, generations.

Changes like those borough about by AI take years and years and years to become mainstream, the rich will reap the benefits first and foremost, and everyone else will be forced to scrape for what they can.

Seriously i dont see how anyone at all could be an optimist when it comes to AI. every crisis we’ve lived through so far this century has been tilted in such a way to benefit the rich and let the working classes figure it out. look at what’s happened in Ohio recently, look at how COVID was handled, look at the response to the crash in 08. An AI built by multi-billion dollar corporations (the only groups who could build such a thing outside of government) will use it to enrich themselves.

The industrial revolution destroyed millions of lives, sure the products of it are great for us after the fact but generations of people suffered and died for literally their entire lives before any sort of movement for improvement began, all while the rich lived increasingly fantastic lives.

with the society we have now, an AGI would only accelerate the divisions between the upper and lower classes, we would go back to that industrial revolution when people were moved off farms and crammed 20 to a room with a toilet shared by an entire tenement. working 12-16 hours a day for a pittance.

There would be fantastic advances and near magical levels of tech, but you are absolutely lying to yourself if you think anyone besides those in charge will see these perks in their lifetime.